Pyeong Hwa Gyeong (062) - True Families : Gateway to Heaven - 1
3. A training ground to enter the kingdom of love
God’s Will is to realize the kingdom of love. In other words, God’s Will is to develop and globalize the ideal world of love. Thus the family is the training ground where people earn credits, all the way from an elementary school certificate, to a bachelor’s degree, and finally a doctoral degree.
Expand the family, and you have the world. Look closely at the world. This is a world where grandfathers and grandmothers live, a world where adults like your uncles and aunts live, a world where people like your elder brothers and elder sisters live, a world where young people live, and a world where children live. So this world is a place where people of all ages—old people, middle-aged people, young adults and children—live together as one family, a family of great dimensions and a vast number of people.
The family is the smallest unit in the kingdom of heaven. It serves as a training center and a study guide. It has all levels of people: grandparents, parents, husband and wife, and siblings. Each of these levels can be expanded to include people in the world at large who are of similar age. This expansion encompasses all humanity. Only a family that loves all humanity as much as it does its own members, in whom the parents live for the sake of the world as much as they do for their own sons and daughters, can inherit the kingdom of heaven. This is an amazing fact. The special right to inherit all the power and authority of heaven and earth created by God is derived from this.
The family is the textbook of love that lets us obtain the right to be registered in the palace of peace in the kingdom of heaven after we die. So the family is a training ground of love. The extension of this family is the world. This is a world that resembles the grandfather of the family, a world that resembles the grandmother, a world that resembles the father and mother, and a world that resembles the son and daughter. Expand the family, and you have the world.
So if you can love the people of the whole world as much as you love your family, as much as you love God with your family at the center, then this will become a straight road leading to the kingdom of heaven. This is why the first commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
The second is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If you love God and love humanity, everything will be realized. If you cannot do this, any spiritual training you may have will be of no use. No matter how great a religious person’s spiritual discipline may be, that person will be unsuccessful if he or she does not know how to love God, humankind and the universe. The family is meant to provide the formula course that trains us to experience love that encapsulates the whole universe, so we can go out and express that love to the whole world. The training ground you were meant to inherit, where you experience this kind of love, is the family where your mother and father raised you.
If you love your parents and your children more than you do your spouse, if you love all humanity and even God more than you do your spouse, everything will be realized. This doesn’t mean that you abandon your spouse. If you love everyone this way, everyone who has received your love will love your spouse. Is anything more glorious than this? If you want to love your spouse, this is how you do it. |